Often, the meaning of a mark does not reside in depiction or representation. Instead, it can only be speculated on for it resides in the customs, conventions, stories, and myths associated with its symbolic representation. So it is that the Department of Symbol is dedicated to the disguised meanings of symbols. Despite their ambiguous appeal to meaning, they are embedded in visual languages and therewith inevitably intertwined with the practice of the typographic mason. Just like the sculptor manipulates raw matter into refined statues, the typographic mason cements associative expressions and gestures into the instantly visible matter.
Underneath these symbolic visual utterances are tokens that transgress beyond the frontier of the inexpressible, beyond the unambiguous singularity of definition, and instead allow equivocal expression and inconclusive interpretation. The meaning of the symbol, in other words, resides neither in its appearance nor is it static or guaranteed. Instead, its meaning resides in the flux of (sub-)cultural conventions in which it is continuously defined and reassigned.
